Friday, to say the least was hectic, and probably most productive day of my flash bamb vacation before starting a new job at UC Berkeley. Oh if you hadn't heard I'm now working at UC Berkeley school of environmental design as their new AV manager. Anyway, since I haven't really taken a vacation ages, and since it would be at least a year before I had any real vacation a-crewed, it was high time to get the hell out of Berkeley for a few days.
Anyway, Friday started for me at 4am, yep 4am. I was up and on my way to Oakland airport via bart for a 5;30am flight. My train was maybe 15 minutes late too. Thanks BART. The Oakland airport at 5am was little used, so my flight to LA was uneventful. Actually I had 3 seats to myself on the first flight, that was awesome. I can't actually remember the last time I had even a free seat next to me! The layover at LAX was equally uneventful and the flight too was in that direction. My flight would finish off at Phoenix, where I had spied video tripod on craiglist while I was in LAX, so I 15 drive later and I had scored a very nice (but used) Monfrotto tripod. After that was to be a leserly drive north with scheduled stops on my way to Flagstaff for the night. But my in car map program kind of failed me. Originally I was head to Sedona for a hour long hike. Then stops at some early native American sites. instead the GPS map failed to direct me to Sedona and I noticed some signage for the last of the 3 native American sites. Ugh. So this part of the trip was actually done in reverse, with a stop at Montazuma's well, followed by Montazuma's Castle and then Tizigoot. All were nice, but Castle access was less then stellar I hate to say. Tizigoot was best the best of three to explore and shoot too.
Montazum's well - natural well of soft that feeds into the local river and kept early native americans with water when the river rand dry
Montazuma's Castle - this whole area actually was filled with settlements, but this is the best known one and handled by the national park service. Up until the 60's you could climb up into the rock homes and explore.
Tizigoot- another settlement for central Arizona and one you can actually enter and see.
After this it was an hour drive into the hills to Sedona to see Cathedral rock. Once I hit the town I had a bit of traffic and some absolutely wild shots of the mounts/hills around the town as magic hour approached and lots of fluffy little dramatic clouds I wanted to shoot. Fuck me, I wish I could have spent a week alone in and around Sedona just to hike and photograph. Anyway, I did make to Cathedral rock, just magic hour was hitting I quickly grabbed my cameras and a tripod and hit the 2 mile straight up the hill hike with minor rock climbing to boot. I have to say this was well worth the hike, even in partial dark, as the summet plus magic hour lighting on all the red rocks, epic clouds and skyline made for the most fantiascitly easy shoots of my life. Really I couldn't aim the camera's anywhere without a great photo coming out of it. The walk back down in the dark was something else too. Just ask my back!
The hike ahead up Cathedral rock
About to summet
At the Summet
The view when coming back down in near darkness
After putting my camera equipment away, it was dinner in Sedona and then 2 hour drive to Flagstaff for the night. The next day of the trip would take me to the Grand Canyon. (more to come)
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